Take a look at

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/randomint.html

You can use the RandInt function found there. Assume your names were in
column A. Select, say, B1:B20 and array-enter (CTRL-SHIFT-ENTER or
CMD-RETURN):

=INDEX(A:A,RandInt(1,COUNTA(A:A)))


In article ,
yorkshire exile <yorkshire wrote:

I need to be able to choose 20 names at random from an existing database of
over 1000 names